THE BEARS OF CHURCHILL: MAGNIFICENCE AND BEAUTY IN THE CANADIAN

I fell in love with a lady in a white fur coat. She was a gorgeous creature, elegant, with sparkling eyes. She had two children--twins. They were strapping, healthy, playful.

But this was a lady I had to admire at a distance. She weighed more than 400 pounds, and she could have bitten me in two with a snap of her jaws.

Lady polar bears are dangerous, as are their mates.

She was one of dozens of bears a group of us saw as we traveled the tundra for a week. Their size, beauty and individual personalities captivated us all, and kept our cameras clicking.

Because polar bears are creatures of the harsh, frigid arctic, few people see them outside of zoos. However, the one spot in the world where there is a happy coincidence of polar bears and civilization is relatively easy to reach. And now, a number of tour operators will take you there to see and photograph the bears. Churchill, Manitoba, sits on the western shore of Hudson Bay, in the northeast corner of Manitoba. In the summer, the town is a small but active port. Grain from Canada`s central provinces is shipped from Churchill to Europe, avoiding the traffic and tedium of the Great Lakes route.

When we landed at the Churchill airport after a three-hour flight from Winnipeg, I was somewhat surprised. Instead of a rustic outpost, I found civilization. A town of about 1,000 people, Churchill is a subarctic hub for much of northern Canada. It provides medical facilities, supplies and services for the smaller, more remote villages in the Hudson Bay area. It used to be larger, until the military base was vacated and torn down.

Churchill is one of the best places in the world to view the aurora borealis. So for several months of the year it is home to scientists who study the northern lights at a nearby research facility.

The town has a modern airport, a Hudson Bay store, a trading post where you can buy manufactured and native goods, several plain but comfortable motels and a number of other stores and dealerships.

Churchill is inaccessible by road. Once Hudson Bay freezes, the only way to reach the town is by rail or air. Pacific Western Airways flies there three times a week from Winnipeg.

For several weeks in late summer and fall, the residents of Churchill share their village with a large number of polar bears.

It`s usually a peaceful coexistence. The hungry bears are tempted more by the town dump than by the local citizens. And the people of Churchill value the opportunity to watch the bears from a close, but safe distance.

Caution keeps tragedies to a minimum. ''Several years ago, the town built a large, bear-proof incinerator,'' said Eric Luke, former head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Churchill. ''In less than 24 hours, the bears had raided it.''

Churchill, the best place in the world to see polar bears, lies in the middle of a migration route used annually by the arctic`s southernmost population of bears. Each fall, hundreds of animals pass through or near Churchill on their way north.

For years, the polar bear migration was the secret of a few scientists, wildlife managers and the people of Churchill. Today, they gladly share that secret with anyone who chooses to visit.

I was privileged to be among those visitors. Some of my fellow travelers were making their second, third or even fourth trips. If you like wildlife and cameras, the polar bears of Churchill are a strong narcotic.

The best time to see the bears is in late October or early November. They spend the winter hunting seals on the pack ice of the polar region and northern Hudson Bay. In the summer, when the ice melts, the bears move inland. In the fall, around Churchill, the bears gather on the shore of the bay, waiting for ice to form.

They begin arriving in late September or early October. By mid-October there can be literally hundreds in the Churchill area. It is in late October and early November that bear-watchers flock to Churchill. A month later, the bears are usually gone, dispersed over the ice in their annual hunt.

Even when the bears are on land, it`s not always easy to see them. There are no roads outside Churchill.

Mass-produced vehicles, even rugged ones, are no match for the tundra. Extreme cold; rough, rocky terrain; and thousands of small, frozen lakes make ground travel an adventure.

Fortunately, the travel problem has been solved by Len Smith and his tundra buggy. When Smith and his crew picked us up at the Polar Motel at 6:30 a.m., it was still dark, and the tundra buggy looked like a mechanical monster from a James Bond movie.

Smith, a short, puckish man, always had a ready smile and an air of total calm. He`s a mechanical genius who cannot be intimidated by anything made of metal.

''I built the first tundra buggy about five years ago,'' Smith said.

''When I started, I didn`t know what it would turn out to be. I saw some big, low-ground-pressure tires and liked them. So I bought four without knowing how I`d ever use them.''

Once the tires were in his Churchill shop, Smith started attaching, building, welding. He wound up with a powerful four-wheel-drive vehicle. It has a cabin about 9 feet by 20 feet that can seat a couple of dozen people comfortably. It also has a wood-burning stove and a washroom.

The tundra buggy, weighing in at four tons, negotiated the tundra confidently. The large, low-pressure tires traversed snow, rocks and ice, barely leaving a track.

Now there are two tundra buggies. Smith and his partner, Roy Bukowski, built a second one last summer to meet a growing demand.

The tundra buggy turned out to be a cozy grandstand for viewing polar bears. The shelter and always-burning stove provided warmth against outside temperatures that hovered around zero. The vehicle lumbered slowly but surely over nearly any terrain. It was high enough off the ground to provide a good vantage point for searching for bears, and its many windows opened, making excellent portals for photography.

My tundra buggy was driven by Len Smith, with Dan Guravich as our tour leader. Guravich is a free-lance photographer with extensive experience in the arctic. Each fall for several years, Guravich has photographed polar bears in the Churchill area. He also is a group leader for Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. The typical tour package includes four or five days in and around Churchill. Besides Victor Emanuel, several other companies operate tours here, including Through The Lens and Joseph Van Os Nature Tours.

The best bear-watching was east of town, away from civilization. There are no roads, but Smith nudged his way across the tundra, keeping a watchful eye for bears. When we spotted bears, simply parking the buggy was often sufficient. The bears` natural curiosity brought them to us. Smith could usually lure the reluctant bears closer with sardines or other bait.

Throughout my week in the Tundra Buggy, we nearly always had bears around us. During the approximately six hours of daylight, there was a constant clicking of camera shutters within the vehicle. At times, the frenzy of several camera motor-drives made the Tundra Buggy sound like it had been invaded by cicadas.

It didn`t take long to develop an appreciation for polar bears.

They are big. A mature male can weigh more than 1,200 pounds. Standing on their hind legs they towered nearly 11 feet tall--sufficient to put their noses against the windows to look us in the eyes. According to Guravich, the young males weighed about 800 pounds, females 400 to 600 pounds.

And they are fast. What started out as a dot on the horizon could fill the frame of my camera viewfinder in a matter of minutes. A young, agile male bear can travel a mile in less than two minutes. He doesn`t even look like he`s running, and never appears winded, despite his great bulk. This deceptive speed made caution essential when we left the safety of the Tundra Buggy.

The bears have a keen sense of smell. If no bears are in view, putting a can of sardines on the Tundra Buggy manifold or stove could often attract them from miles away.

Sometimes we would see a lone bear stop and toss its head from side to side. It was signalling that another bear was in the vicinity, long before we could see the second animal even with our binoculars.

The bears travel alone, not in packs. The fact that there are so many around at one time is simply a coincidence of timing. All are headed in the same direction; all waiting for the ice on Hudson Bay to freeze sufficiently to support their weight for the seal hunt.

Guravich has been photographing polar bears for so long that he recognizes several of them. He knows them by name--at least his names.

''That`s Bones, isn`t it, Len?'' Guravich called out when a gangly, arthritic-looking bear approached our Tundra Buggy. ''This is the third year we`ve seen him,'' Guravich explained. ''Surprised he`s still alive.''

Many of the bears seemed to know each other, perhaps from autumns spent in the Churchill area.

When two bears encountered each other, they would approach, then circle. Often, the smaller and younger of the two would advance. If friendship hadn`t been established previously, a low but forceful growl from the older bear usually was sufficient to put the younger in his place.

Bears about the same size often whiled away the hours wrestling. At times, mock combat raged near our Tundra Buggy all afternoon--with occasional rest breaks. For the most part it was good, clean fun. We never saw a bonafide bear fight.

Female bears, particularly mothers with cubs, kept their distance from the larger males. If a strange bear approached a mother and her family, she became quite aggressive. Yet, with the cubs, she was a firm but gentle parent. One mother bear with a pair of cubs seemed to adopt us during my tour. She spent parts of three days around our Tundra Buggy. The family soon became favorites of us all.

Polar bears have an average of two cubs per litter. This young-looking female was no exception. The cubs were this year`s crop. Guravich and Smith estimated them to weigh about 100 pounds each.

Sometimes the cubs imitated their mother. When she walked, they walked, following directly behind in her footsteps. If she quenched her thirst with snow, they would do likewise. If she laid down and wiggled along the ice on her belly, the cubs would follow suit.

Other times, the cubs played. They would tussle with each other for hours on end. Or sometimes one would go off a few feet to play on his own.

One afternoon, one cub went on what was apparently a pretend hunt, practice for the reality that lay in his future. He would stalk through the snow; stop; then pounce ferociously through a drift, attacking chunks of snow or willow twigs.

A New York investment banker in our group videotaped all this with a portable camera and provided us with an ''instant'' replay of the cub`s antics back at the Polar Motel in Churchill.

One of the highlights of the week was a unique photographic opportunity starring the mother bear and her cubs. In the afternoon of our third day, after the threesome had been playing for some time, the mother bear began calling her cubs. After clearing a small nest in the snow, she sat down and nursed them. This was just a few feet from the Tundra Buggy, in full view of our cameras. It was the first time in his career that even Dan Guravich had photographed such a private moment in a bear`s life in the wild.

Photographing on the tundra is a special challenge for professionals as well as amateurs. With all that white snow, it wasn`t safe to trust the built- in light meter on my camera.

Photographing white bears against a white background under bright and overcast conditions with various sun angles thrown in to further complicate matters isn`t exactly easy.

But with a little practice, I learned to adjust, and Guravich kept us advised on the best exposures. He has had so much experience that he could call out the proper camera setting without so much as a glance at his light meter.

Most of our shooting was done at 1/250 second, at f4 to f8 with 64-ASA film. That shutter speed was fast enough to capture any action we saw. Because the bears were so close to our vehicle I used my 28 mm., 50 mm. and 135 mm. lenses the most.

If done properly, nearly every polar bear photo can be a trophy. As the angle and intensity of the sun changed, the whole texture of the image changed. Depending on the time of day, cloud cover and the angle of the sun, the snow photographed white, blue or pink. The bears appeared bright golden, or yellow, white or gray. Some images turned out with sharp contrast, others more subtle.

The long arctic dawns and sunsets painted their own special pictures. The sky could appear red, yellow or black, with backlighting turning the bears into phantom silhouettes against the white snow.

Bears weren`t the only wildlife to see and photograph. During our trip we saw such birds as ptarmigan, snowy owls and gyrfalcons. But perhaps the most captivating wildlife other than the polar bears were the arctic foxes.

These beautiful white animals are plentiful on the tundra. They follow the polar bears--at a safe distance--waiting for seal leftovers. But they are not total scavangers. The foxes also hunt birds, lemmings and other animals.

But the tundra itself has a beauty all its own. At first glance there was remarkable sameness everywhere. But after a few minutes a varied terrain with an almost magical appeal emerged.

The tree line ends just south of Churchill. The few trees that have managed to creep that far north keep their backs to the northern winds:

branches grow only on the south side of the trees.

The flat appearance of the tundra is deceptive. Frozen ground packed with small, unconnected lakes rolls on forever. The horizon is frequently broken by ridges of gravel called eskers. These ridges are ancient riverbeds that once traversed the glaciers that covered this area.

Above the tree line, there is little vegetation in the winter. Grassy rushes poked their heads above the snow along the shore of Hudson Bay. Willows, seldom more than a foot tall, provide cover for the birds and small wildlife.

It`s pretty to look at, but the tundra is unforgiving. Temperatures during my visit required heavy clothing. Layers of clothes worked best. Inside the Tundra Buggy a sweater or down vest was enough. Outside, we needed all the protection we could get against the cold wind.

In cold weather, if my feet are warm, I`m warm. So I bought a pair of Canadian army boots in a surplus store in Winnipeg in my way north. At $150, they were an excellent investment. They are soft, many-layered, and kept my feet warm and dry in even the extreme conditions of our trip.

Spending a week traveling in a Tundra Buggy, photographing one of the most beautiful and unusual animals on Earth, was a unique and memorable experience. In the rough, roadless terrain and bitter cold, the warmth and conversation of fellow travelers took on special comfort. In just a few days, we made many lasting friendships.

Churchill isn`t for people who require a ritual five o`clock cocktail, or for those who judge motels by the size of their swimming pools. But for those who like adventure, are awed by magnificent animals and humbled by nature, I`d give it a shot.